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Why Litecoin’s Riding High

Over the course of the history of the crypto market, Litecoin has been termed the silver to Bitcoin’s gold. Until recently, its’ long-term price movements seemed to corroborate such a strong correlation between the two crypto assets. Because Litecoin looks to have been recently moving against this trend, the reasons behind its’ current surge bear a bit of explaining.

According to a report today from CoinDesk, Litecoin had risen 12.7% in 24-hours at 11 a.m. UTC. As of about 2:30 UTC, however, Litecoin was up 12.97% by the same measurement, indicating that its’ rise might continue for a longer period of time. At this point, judging by CoinDesk’s article and various social media posts on the subject, the question on the tip of everyone’s tongues is: why?

The CoinDesk piece begins by admitting that recently, no striking reasons for this rise had come to light. Simultaneously, the writer speculates that Litecoin’s short-term bullish trend could logically have to do with the fact that the Litecoin Foundation is in talks to implement the Mimblewimble protocol across the network.

If you’re not familiar with Mimblewimble, first keep in mind that the Litecoin network is currently a public blockchain network. All transactions can theoretically be tracked. If the Litecoin development community were to implement the Mimblewimble protocol, then it is possible that the network would be able to allow its’ users to choose between sending a transaction publicly or privately. Considering this, to understand Mimblewimble, all you really need to understand is the difference between a network protocol that facilitates public transactions and a network protocol that facilitates private transactions. In other words, Mimblewimble is akin to the zk-Snarks protocol, which allows the Zcash network to remain private.

Whether or to this news is directly affecting Litecoin’s price at all in the short-term, it is possible that a larger price movement could occur if and when Mimblewimble is fully assimilated into the network. While none of this is direct financial advice, the reason for this possibility is simple. In the blockchain world, the technical features represent one of the chief indicator’s of a network’s true value.